JAGUAR’S PORSCHE-KILLER

WHEN TONY SOUTHGATE saw the engine around which he had to design a new Group C car, he did two things: utter a profanity under his breath and reach for a bandsaw. The swearword was a reaction to the size of the V12 lump in front of him, the bandsaw a tool with which to try to pare it down into a form suitable to go into the back of a pure-bred racing prototype. That car was to be a Jaguar, the first of a line of 12-cylinder machines built by Tom Walkinshaw Racing that would go on to win the Le Mans and Daytona 24-hour classics two times apiece, not to mention a pair of world titles.

That’s a pretty decent haul for a car powered by an engine that Southgate describes as “the size of a fish-and-chip shop”. He was no stranger to designing V12 racing cars – he’d penned Formula 1 machinery for BRM, Shadow and Osella with engines of such a configuration – but this one was